The Golden Gate Bridge Is THE Bridge

I thought taking a week-long vacation in San Fransisco and not watching documentaries would leave me without a proper blog post. Thankfully I was totally wrong.

A photo I took last week on the Golden Gate Bridge, San Fransisco, CA

Walking the 45 minute journey across the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw the sign pictured above. Then my memory was sparked: oh yeah. I'm standing on suicide central.

About a year ago I saw the 2006 film, The Bridge, which investigates the high rate of suicides off the windy and treacherous (I now know from experience) Golden Gate Bridge. Filming for 10,000 hours in 2004 director Eric Steel managed to capture 23 jumps. He gathered interviews from witnesses and family members of the victims. Steel said in a filming application for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area that he intended "to capture the powerful, spectacular intersection of monument and nature that takes place every day at the Golden Gate Bridge." This was only partially the truth; he was directly inspired to film the bridge by the 2003 New Yorker article Jumpers.

The opening sequence is Koyaanisqatsi-esq in it's concentrated  footage of one object, sometimes sped up, focusing on people interacting with the bridge, with no narration; just music. The people laugh and walk, kite board, take photos, work construction. Some stop and look out at the magnificent view or pause to touch the metal cables. The frequency of these close shots increase, and the pause for contemplation starts to seem more sinister, or sad. The tension builds. Finally one of the people looking out... jumps. 

 These are some chilling facts from Wikipedia in their article about the Golden Gate Bridge,

•  "More people die by suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge than at any other site in the world."

• "By 2005, this count exceeded 1,200 and new suicides were occurring about once every two weeks."

• "The California Highway Patrol removed 70 apparently suicidal people from the bridge [in 2006]."

• "As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump."

•  "After a fall of approximately four seconds, jumpers hit the water at around 75 mph or approximately 120 km/h."

• "The fatality rate of jumping is roughly 98%."

The blue crisis counseling sign -- which was the only one I saw -- is damaged and worn. It expresses a hopelessness. Obviously people have been fecklessly putting stickers over it; the sign's message helpless to permanent defacement as some remove the stickers in vain to keep the message visible. It says the problem is too big for the tiny sign to solve. 
Below is The Bridge in its entirety.